


Fitting The Pieces

by athersgeo



Category: Bourne (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 15:31:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6615928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athersgeo/pseuds/athersgeo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a year, Jason's still trying to pick up the pieces</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fitting The Pieces

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [3am](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1625744) by [athersgeo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/athersgeo/pseuds/athersgeo). 



> It's set a year after the end of Ultimatum/Legacy.
> 
> The original story (3am) was written for Yuletide 2008 as a gift for Inveigler. This was written during (but not for) Yuletide 2011 but for various reasons, it never got posted. With the new film due out in a couple of months, I thought I'd better get it up now - before it gets Joss'd (or should that be Greengrass'd?)

It's been a year.

It's been one hell of a year, he thinks. Being shot – again – and falling into water. Beginning his new life as he ended his old one. There's some thing vaguely poetic and symmetrical about that, but it's not something he wants to dwell on, because it wasn't the beginning that was important.

It was what came next.

Landy did her job and finished clearing up after the mess left behind by Ward Abbott and Blackbriar and Tredstone and hundreds of illegal operations. It didn't clear his name – but he doesn't mind that too much. After all, he can't get back to David Webb. Even if he were to remember all the missing pieces, he's not the man he was.

That hasn't meant he hasn't tried to get back what he lost.

He's spent most of the last year re-treading in old footsteps. Landy was able to give him a few places to start and he's visited them all. A small churchyard in northern Maine gave him a few answers. An army camp in Virginia added a little colour. A college campus in Washington added some spice.

None of them gave him the glue to stitch the pieces together.

But he thinks he knows who might be able to help him with that part.

So he starts his search in Paris. He has a hazy suspicion that she spent some time there, just before the end of his old life, but she isn't there now. He tries Monaco, too, but if she's following any of the advice he gave her she won't be there. So when he doesn't find her amongst the rich and beautiful people, he isn't surprised.

Madrid is crossed off his list before it even makes it on there – the Spanish capital will still be too hot for her, given the chaos in which she left. Rome is tried, though. And Florence and Milan. Another hazy suspicion suggests she has a quiet passion for art and architecture and history, but if she is indulging it, it's somewhere other than Italy.

He tries Prague just before Christmas; Vienna just after. She's not in either, but they are on his route north, and both are lovely places to spend the holidays. He doesn't think that David Webb ever took the time to do something so normal.

As the year clicks round to 2006, he crosses the border from Austria and into Germany. He's remembered the showdown there, when he held her at gun point in the Berliner U-Bahn, and he thinks that might just be the tip he needs.

It takes another two days, once he reaches the German capital, before he tracks her down. Her hair is longer than he remembers it and she's a redhead now, but for all the cosmetic changes, he recognises her in the quaint little Bäckerei. She's serving Berlin grandmothers with their schwartzbrot and kuchen. He thinks that it's a good job, and one that her – their – former employers would never suspect, but from the interactions, she's been there a while. The grandmothers all smile and greet her like an old friend. If she's following his advice, and the job and the hair suggests that she is, she'll be moving on soon.

He's been lucky to find her.

The knowledge that she's likely going to leave Berlin before the month is out pushes up his schedule. He allows himself another day of watching; of learning her routines and finding where she's calling home. Then a day more to make his preparations. Her apartment lock is only a simple one, but he has to check that there aren't any other precautions that she might have taken.

There aren't.

He watches her come home, a smudge of flour on her cheek, and debates how best to approach her. He wryly thinks that the traditional way would be for him to point a gun at her, but as this is supposed to be a new start, perhaps a different method might be better.

He finally settles on sneaking into her apartment in the darkest hour of the night. It's not the best plan in the world, but it's one that will work and give him a chance to slip away without anyone seeing him – should the need arise. From his earlier preparation, he knows the way through to her bedroom, but he's surprised – and pleased – to see that she's set up a trashcan in the middle of his path. He avoids it – as would anyone likely sent after her – but he likes that she's thinking that way.

At her bedroom door, he listens to her breathing and judges that she's asleep. He gently pushes the door open and steps in and knows the instant that she wakes – though he doubts anyone else would. She keeps her breathing deep and even, but he can see the minute movements that suggest she's reaching for something beneath her pillow.

He takes another step, and in the next instant, she surges upright, a gun aimed directly at his chest. He's impressed by the speed and the aim – and amused by the role reversal. Though at this point, it's probably fair.

"Don't move, or I'll shoot," she warns.

"No you won't." He's not sure how he knows it, but he does.

She fumbles for a light switch and although the tiny puddle of light barely illuminates the square foot of nightstand beneath the bulb, it's clearly enough light for her to confirm who he is. He sees the tension drain out of her shoulders and watches as she lowers the gun. She doesn't relax entirely – but after a year of living on the run, he doesn't expect her to.

"What are you doing here?" she asks.

"I'm still trying to make the pieces fit together," he answers, offering up a tentative smile. "I'm hoping you can help me."


End file.
